When Bill Clinton Hadam's refugee family was approved for resettlement in the U.S., the boy's...
Mary Wiltenburg, for the Pulitzer Center Neema walks in her slum neighborhood. (Mary Wiltenburg/copyright Christian Science Monitor)
For the past year Christian Science Monitor reporter Mary Wiltenburg has been reporting the story of nine-year-old Bill Clinton Hadam and his new life in America. After escaping slaughter in Rwanda and Congo the Hadam family spent nearly a decade in a Tanzanian refugee camp where conditions were still dangerous. Bill's sister, Neema, was raped and ran away. Fear of arrest and losing their chance of a permanent home kept the family from leaving the camp in search of Neema. In 2006, they were approved for US resettlement and moved to Georgia without their daughter.
The Pulitzer Center joins the project as Wiltenburg goes to Tanzania to meet Neema and her son. What follows are blog excerpts from the beginning of Wiltenburg's trip. Wiltenburg herself will be posting more dispatches in the coming weeks right here on Untold Stories.
Heading to Tanzania - and Neema
Since August, many of you have been writing to ask after, and offer assistance to, Bill Clinton Hadam's 20-year-old sister Neema. As you may remember, the onetime runaway and her 4-year-old son are living in Tanzania, separated from her family and anxious to be reunited with them.
After months of saving and planning, this weekend, if all goes well, I will travel to Dar es Salaam to meet Neema and Briton, and to spend several weeks getting to know them and learning about the time their family spent as refugees. As often as possible, I'll post updates about the experience of what one Pixar-and pun-loving friend has called: "finding Neema."
But even the preparations for the trip have been an adventure. Beyond all the shots and logistics, getting ready to go meet their daughter has changed both my relationships with, and my sense of, mom Dawami and stepdad Hassan.
Lugging the loot of love … to AfricaIf you had one chance in 10 years to send presents to your child, what would you give them? Dawami and Hassan faced the dilemma this week, as I prepared to visit their daughter Neema and grandson Briton in Tanzania.I said I would use my luggage allowance to take them a bag of gifts from their family here. Hassan and Dawami spent the week nervously shopping, and Bill and Igey contributed favorite toys and clothes for their nephew. On Friday, when I went to their house to pick up the suitcase, Hassan, Igey, and I unpacked it and went through all the items together.The contents ranged from the touching to the bizarre: Continue reading
Meeting Neema 4/14 In a spotless room in a dusty slum at the edge of palm-studded Dar es Salaam Tuesday morning, I met Bill Clinton's sister Neema. Right away, she considered me family – thanks to her son, who immediately christened me "Bibi" (grandma).
Never mind the improbability of his having a 32-year-old, white, non-Swahili-speaking grandmother. Never mind the poignancy of that mistake, or the overwhelming strangeness of receiving such a visitor in the slums of Kigogo, where chickens scramble up and down the garbage hill at the edge of the settlement, and the sight of a mzungu is rare – or, even, unprecedented, if the stares as our little party trooped around were any indication. He knew I had come from America, and to 4-year-old Briton Joseph, America is the Land of Bibi. Continue reading
Heartbreaking faith in a mzungu
Neema John has her mother's smile, her shyness - and her immediate, total, heartbreaking faith in me.
Today and yesterday, as we walked the grit-and-boulder footpaths of her neighborhood, and sat in her tin-roofed room with dusty light sifting through the window screen, we talked about her life and hopes. Neema's desperate to get to her family in Atlanta; she doesn't see any future for herself or her son here in Tanzania, where she's living illegally, without refugee status, in constant fear of discovery.
She has told neighbors that her family is from Arusha, Tanzania, the home of the Rwandan genocide tribunals - where, in fact, Dawami did partly grow up. Some know too that her mom is in America. So when I showed up, it wasn't just Briton who made assumptions. Continue reading
Lollipops, dancing, camaraderie … in a Tanzanian slum 4/22 Not to hopelessly romanticize life in Tanzania's urban slums – for sure, Neema's Dar es Salaam neighborhood is home to all the same problems that plague people living in poverty everywhere – but at times, life there has real appeal.
Though "resource-poor" – a term often applied to ICS, the scrappy charter school her brothers attend in Atlanta – vastly understates its situation, the school her son attends is full of curious, disciplined, apparently happy kids. The settlement of houses in which Neema rents a room is ranged chock-a-block up a hillside, its maze of passages impenetrable by cars, so 4-year-old Briton and his friends can roam their small world with relative independence. Someone's always playing a radio; someone's always cooking; and in the intervals between work, people spend hours stoop-sitting and chatting. Continue reading
A ray of hope for Neema? 4/29
Could I have met the folks today who'll change the course of Neema's life?
An astonishing interview this afternoon [April 16th; blogs posted with a delay due to lack of email access] with the head of the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees in Tanzania is the first glimmer of hope in months that Bill Clinton Hadam's sister Neema John may still have a chance of reuniting with her family in the US.
Since her mom's petition to bring her to Atlanta was rejected by US immigration officials last summer, 20-year-old Neema's chances of seeing her mother, stepfather, and young brothers again have looked extremely bleak. I came to Tanzania to meet her – but without much hope for her case. Continue reading.
